


flight to quality

by arbitrarily



Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: Canon-Typical Dialogue, Character Study, Friends to Lovers to Enemies, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Unhealthy Relationships, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:34:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25000960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arbitrarily/pseuds/arbitrarily
Summary: Stewy doesn't like ambiguity. He likes ownership.
Relationships: Stewy Hosseini/Kendall Roy
Comments: 10
Kudos: 100





	flight to quality

In the morning it would be clear. They would be clear. 

Stewy hated ambiguity. He wanted the obvious, the inarguable and elegant cut down the middle. This or that, yes or no, black or white. In or out. Any bet you made otherwise became an actual gamble. 

He allowed himself the smallest flicker of worry before he went to sleep. Indulged it as if it was a worse vice than anything else he could possible do or had done to himself. He slept well, all the same. An Ambien, the bed comfortable, sheets crisp. The room dark, anonymous in the name of both good hospitality and better money. A part of him had expected to wake to Kendall, heavy and warm, sprawled in the bed with him. That he would’ve made his way in when Stewy was too drugged out to do anything about the intimacy other than allow it. Even in their younger days Kendall always mistook partnership, be it in business or sexual gratification, for intimacy. The perfect john—assuming transaction could ever serve as a form of love. 

It was the promise of what was to come, maybe, that allowed him to think almost fondly of Ken as he dressed the following morning. Maybe, sometimes, alone and in private, he thought the same.

And then, as the poets liked to say, the shit hit the fan.

A woman approaches his table. He doesn’t glance up at her, knowing her as a woman solely by her slacks (sad, cheap, a working woman’s unpressed wardrobe) and her shoes (same).

He keeps his gaze trained on the iPhone in his hand. Well-aware she is not waitstaff, he says, “I’ve already been helped, thanks.”

“Oh, right. Good?” She clears her throat. “No. Um. Stewy Hosseini?”

He looks up at his name. Like a well-trained dog or garden variety narcissist, he’s dependable that way. “Guilty? Unless you are in fact accusing me of a crime, which in that case, never heard of the guy.” His face dips down into a small frown. “You’re not a fucking process server, are you?”

“No. No, nothing like that.” She holds a hand over her chest, pale, a pen hooked between her index and middle fingers. No manicure. Bad cuticles. “I’m Michelle Pantsil.”

Stewy does not know a Michelle Pantsil. Stewy has an assistant and his assistant has an assistant to make sure that Stewy does not need to know people like Michelle Pantsil. 

He raises his eyebrows. “You’re who-what’s-it now?”

She somehow, defying both social norms and the promise of further awkwardness, takes this as an invitation to sit. Stewy knows what she is then: a journalist. Goddamnit. 

“I’ve left several messages, with your assistant, that is, I believe, pertaining to my interest in the opportunity to speak with you.” They must pay her by the word, he decides. “You’re a hard man to find.” She tacks on a nervous laugh.

Stewy lowers his phone to the table, the screen clicked off, facedown. He crosses his legs under the table, leans back in his chair. “By design. Though, in light of present company, renovations will need to be made.”

“I’m writing a book,” she says abruptly. 

“How very lovely for you.” When she says nothing more, he gestures loosely. “Is the publishing industry that hard-up they have their writers out doing the footwork, advertising and proselytizing, fellating perhaps, their prospective market? If so, I have some bad news for you.” He drops his voice, a mock-conspiratorial tone. “Not much of a reader. This guy though,” and he nods his head towards the dour-looking young man with his face buried in some Dostoevsky at the table adjacent, “might make for a better tree to bark up.” He nods again, as if to say, _shoo_.

There’s that nervous laugh again. “I see my messages were truly lost. Mr. Hosseini, I’m writing a book about Logan Roy. I was hoping you might be able to offer some…insight.”

“If not a juicy quote?”

The world is all about proposition, and frankly, hers is disappointing. She appeals to better angels and the truth, two things Stewy has never personally cared for in the slightest. Who cares about the truth of things. If you want to know what goes on in the backroom, you have to be in the backroom. That’s something Kenny has never fully understood, and Stewy knows it’s because Kendall was born into that backroom. You can take anything for granted, when you’re born with it. Stewy’s guilty of it too, his own set of inheritances shouldered with little consideration of their price or weight. You don’t apologize for them, but you also don’t waste them—another sin of Ken’s. 

“Wrong tree again,” he finally says. “I have nothing of interest to say.”

“You’re a friend of Kendall Roy’s, yes? You have been—for some time. College?”

That’s only the half of it, but far be it from him to dissuade a partial truth. “Look at that. She did her research.” He shrugs, lazy and approaching bored. “I got nothing for you, Pantsuit.”

“Pantsil. But you do know Kendall Roy. You have known him. I am sure there are stories.”

“Come on. I didn’t think you wrote fiction.” He’s fast eclipsed boredom and has launched into irritated. The food here’s not worth the aggravation. He reaches into his pocket for his money clip and drops a bill onto the table. He shoulders on his coat. He stands over her.

“Come on,” he says again, less venom this time. “Does anyone really know anybody? I don’t think so. I know they don’t. Do not call me again.”

It isn’t loyalty. It’s just lack of interest.

Stewy’s never wanted to know the Roys. 

He has no interest in them beyond whatever action is currently on the table. He’s not like Ken, doing his due diligence before he goes in and gets his dick wet. Poring over his charts and his graphs and tables, the colonoscopy footage, before he dives in, mouth open and hungry. 

Stewy doesn’t do that shit. He’s got people for that. That’s not to say he’s stupid, that he’s unprepared. He’s no dilettante. But he runs off instinct. He walks into a room knowing, and in turn getting, what he wants. He isn’t Ken, needy and reeking of flop sweat and _eau de désespoir_. Stewy knows how to get what he wants. His instinct hasn’t failed him yet.

That’s not entirely true. Kendall—that’s his failure. He gets to wear that.

“He hasn’t got it, has he.” That was what Sandy had said, first at fucking Rhomboid and then, again, later. By phone. “He hasn’t got it.”

“No, he’s good. He's good for it.” That was what Stewy had said both times, even when every fiber of his being told him otherwise. The doubt was there and ever-present, but he had crowded it out with something he refused to name. Kenny would cave. Daddy would kneecap him. Daddy would know which buttons to press to bring him crawling back to his side of the boardroom, and sure enough—there he fucking went. He slithered along, and though Stewy had thought it incredible to watch him sit up straight on live television considering he had left what remained of his spine somewhere between his room and his sister’s wedding reception, he could not say he was surprised.

So maybe his instincts had never failed him. It was the other way around. He had thought at the time—after, disappointment and disgust a potent cocktail he gagged on as he swallowed—that maybe this right here was the closest thing he would ever know to actual friendship. You rallied for your man, even when you knew that he would likely fail you.

He would be sure to never do that again.

He doesn’t remember when he first met Logan Roy. Like Kendall, the rest of his family has always been in his life. You don’t remember the inconsequential shit like that when you’re younger, meeting your friends’ parents. They were just there, background noise. And besides, everyone’s dad was someone. Titan of this industry versus scion of that, political heavyweight against Broadway sop. This one traded in blood money, and that one denied it. You knew who the really important kids were by virtue of their important parents, and Kendall, along with Stewy, ranked near the top. 

That didn’t mean you gave a shit about the parents in question. 

Even now—he doesn’t give a shit about Logan Roy. Let the record motherfucking reflect. He’s served as impediment and accelerant and occasionally, rarely, as an ally. To assign him any more meaning than that is as fruitless as to attempt to divine greater meaning from a Grindr bio.

The first time he really remembers clocking Kendall’s dad as Logan Roy, he was running roughshod through their Upper East Side residence with Kendall. It was after Logan’s face was floating in the news. Some shit ATN had pulled in their Desert Storm coverage. A lie that became a truth that turned back into a lie, who the fuck cared. His face was everywhere.

And he was in the apartment. Bumbling about in an old and worn L.L. Bean-looking fisherman sweater, cussing up a storm about the cable TV remote not working. Kendall had rushed over immediately to help him. Pacify him. Logan had looked right past him.

“Who’s the boy there?”

“Dad, that’s Stewy. You know. Stewy Hosseini?”

“Hosseini. That’s oil money, isn’t it?”

Stewy already knew plenty of men like him. He rolled his eyes all the same. “Sure. Why not. Sir.”

Stewy’s father hated Logan Roy. He hated the entire family. “Stupid American money,” he would say, even if Logan wasn’t and even if his own family had made much of their fortune off of exactly that: stupid American money.

He hated Kendall, too. “That boy, he’s no good. Useless. He’s a nothing.”

Stewy never argued with him. He never argued with his father about anything, and he certainly didn’t start by rising to his best friend’s defense. He never defended Kendall, not to anyone. Except for the once. Twice. And where the fuck did that get him?

He ran into Shiv, not long after the wedding. A crowded bar, trendy, unlike her if only because it was exactly his crowd. She was drunk. Stewy knew her best drunk.

“You’re the last fucking asshole I wanna see,” she said. She wasn’t slurring her words, not yet, but her face was pink, clashed with her hair. She pointed an accusatory finger at him. Poked him in the chest with it. “You came to my wedding intending to fuck the father of the bride. That’s poor form, even for you.”

Stewy grinned. “Speaking of, where is the dearly beloved? That must be one of the benefits, I’ll bet, marrying a man like him. Find any crowd, he’s guaranteed to stick out.”

She glowered, but she didn’t say anything, which with her was its own breed of victory. He found he had nothing to say either. Kendall sat as a gaping hole between them. A ghost, a corpse. He only knew her through the prism Kendall afforded. Stewy had no interest in her otherwise. She was the wrong kind of cunt.

It was just like her then, to not be able to leave well enough alone. She leaned over, her weight pressed both against the edge of the bar and into him. Her skin felt too hot and he couldn’t decide which would send the better message, to step back or to remain, when she spoke.

“Ask me about him. I know it’s killing you.”

In the noisy bar, he misheard her. He thought she said, _I know he’s killing you_. 

He took a quick step away from her and she recovered from a near stumble, graceless and flustered. 

“Siobhan,” he said. “He’s already fucking dead to me.”

“Frank says you’re a bad influence.” 

An impish grin spread across Kendall’s tired face as he said it. He looked so much older sober. Somehow, strung-out suited him better. Stewy had told him this already, twice, that evening. Now that Kendall was sprung from rehab, they could start having fun again. He told him that, too.

“Daddy Frank.” Stewy rolled his neck, tried to crack it. He was in agreement with Roman—Frank fucking sucked. It was the lone thing he agreed with when it came to Roman Roy and his uncut id. “He suck your dick as good as I do to make it worth your while? Walking that straight and narrow to make him proud? Prioritizing the ol’ Franciscan monk over your dearest dick-sucking friend Stew?”

Kendall’s face was unreadable. He was at his most interesting like that. Stewy always thought so. It had taken him awhile to get there, always so open, all but bleeding every thought and emotion out all over himself like a concussed loser post-prizefight. 

Kendall’s mouth tipped up. He laughed a single syllable, “Huh.” His gaze drifted down to the coke residue Stewy had left on the lacquered coffee table. He didn’t move for it though. He had said, in response to both times Stewy had tried to goad him tonight, that this was different. He was going to be different. He’d be better; he was better. 

“You’re the laziest cocksucker I’ve ever known,” he was saying now.

Stewy felt good, on the right side of a high where everything felt both possible and already actualized. “Took ’til now for you to fucking complain about it.”

“I’m complaining now.”

“Yeah? Then why don’t you come show me how it’s done.”

It was that easy. Kendall on his knees, his idea of seduction immediate gratification. And Stewy knew—who was Kendall to pass up any opportunity to prove himself.

“You know I’ve never liked you.”

The feeling, he did not tell Rava, was mutual. He regretted stepping out from the festivities in the Roy apartment, if only to be cornered like this, in the cold, the muffled string quartet lurching through Tchaikovsky. 

“And what, might you suggest, a man should do with that sort of information?”

“I want you to stay away from him.” Rava said it very flat. She said it in a way where he could imagine her at PTA meetings, if only based on the PTA meetings he had seen on television series he idly watched. A woman with a blowout and obvious highlights would stand up in her perfectly selected cashmere knits and fitted jeans, a spin-class toned ass the standout feature, and she would address the assembly, as futilely brought together as the United fucking Nations, and demand to know if the carrot slices were organic or not. That was her world, he was pretty sure of it.

“Is that jealousy I detect?” 

She looked very tired. She was well-matched with Kendall on that front. They both had the same cratering dark circles under their eyes, like they spent both their days and nights chasing something together they would never catch. Maybe it was the only thing they did together. Stewy didn’t go in for marriage—contracts were made to find loopholes in, the best ways to exploit; marriage offered very little fun in that regard—but he thought maybe that was all it was in the end: chasing, disappointing, exhausting. 

“No, Stewy. It’s protection.” Rava was solid, unlike Kendall. He couldn’t knock her down, not that Stewy had ever really tried. He never really thought about her. She belonged to a part of Kendall’s life that offered him zero interest. “You’re not good for him.”

Stewy didn’t think she was trying to hurt him, which might have been the most fascinating thing about her. She presented the fact without hidden agenda. What she wanted she had made perfectly clear: a happy home, a sober husband, a photo-ready life. For Kendall’s long-standing best friend to find, and keep to, the exit. She had chosen the wrong man for all of those things, and it wasn’t Stewy’s fault she was only discovering that now. It wasn’t Stewy’s fault that Kendall would always be easily led astray. If what she wanted was domestic tranquility and Martha fucking Stewart family meals in her perfectly appointed kitchen and clean sheets and fidelity, then she should have married a stronger man. A better man.

Stewy grinned at her, shit-eating and filthy. His mouth tasted acidic and sharp from the dry champagne. 

“Thus, I’m told, the appeal.”

He hooked up with Ken the morning of his wedding to Rava. The best man with his hand down the front of the groom’s pressed trousers, the rasp of his hand against the wool, the wet click of Kendall’s tongue as he tried to work his mouth, as he stuttered and said, pathetic and small, “I can’t—don’t let me—I can’t get anything on these pants, fuck.” All Stewy had done was laugh and work him harder.

He didn’t get anything on his pants and he did not kiss him. He was washing his hands as Roman entered the suite, still snarling over the fact that Stewy had taken what was to rightfully be his, by virtue of bloodline at the least. Stewy turned off the sink. He could hear the drone of Kendall’s voice.

“Bro, come on. I’m getting married. Can we not? For one day? Can we just, fucking chill?”

He caught Ken’s eye as he stepped out of the bathroom, before he let his mouth crack into a beaming grin, as much malevolent energy as he could muster directed at Roman. “Baby brother.”

“Fuck you, you—you fucking usurper. It’s supposed to be me, I’m supposed to be best man.”

Roman was easy enough to tune out. Instead he watched Kendall as Kendall watched himself in the full-length mirror. He readjusted his jacket. He adjusted his posture. He smiled, or he practiced a smile. Maybe what Kendall felt in that moment was actual joy, but it did not reach his eyes.

Good, Stewy thought. That was good.

Nothing would change. Nothing between them would change, that was what he had needed for Kendall to understand. Wedding ring or not, fucking future kids and a dog and a house in Connecticut, god fucking help him—all of those were details. Negotiable. Not fundamentals, not between them. Nothing had to change. Nothing would change, not unless Stewy willed it.

He needed Kendall to understand that. So in the groom’s suite he had shoved Kendall against the wall and Kendall had let him and Stewy thought that meant they had an accord. Nothing would change.

It took nearly a fucking decade, but it finally did. They changed. And it was all Kendall’s fault.

“We had the whole world in our hands—”

And you know what? Fuck him. Because for a moment there? He might’ve actually believed that.

The day after the failed coup, the Waystar Royco building had the same energy befitting victims of attempted murder or survivors of natural disasters or the nobility mid-French Revolution. Hushed and anxious, eyes everywhere, waiting for the blade to drop again. 

He ran into Roman first, pacing before the bank of windows in his father’s office. He stopped when Stewy walked in. 

“Yo.”

“Roman. I see Daddy’s keeping his good boy close at hand.”

“Fuck off.” Roman began to pace again only to pause, his back turned to Stewy. He rubbed at the nape of his neck then whirled around to face him. “Okay, fine, no chit-chat, no foreplay, we’ll skip right to pillow talk. You heard from Kendall?”

Stewy’s mouth twisted wryly. He collapsed into the chair closest to the door. He surveyed the office, exercised some limited imagination and pretended it was his. He pushed that away and returned his attention to Kendall’s brother. He looked childish and small, waiting for his answer.

God, he didn’t want to know the Roys. Shouldn’t they fucking know? Cruelty was another form of currency. They of all people should know that already.

Stewy sighed. “Roman. Ro-Ro. Hot tip? After you’ve stabbed a man in the back? And you’ve got your foot on his neck? You don’t check to see if he’s still breathing.”

At that table in that shitty cafe in Midtown, it was Pantsil who got the final word. 

“No,” she said, as he tried to walk away. “I think they do.”

Ken is on the screen. Stewy watches him.

You don’t really know anyone. That’s what he tells himself. He watches Kendall rise in front of the cameras. He should be lost in the flurry of excitement—the reporters yelling, cameramen jostling for the best angle. He’s not. He’s in the center of it. He rips the papers Karolina left for him in half. Stewy can see him. Stoop-shouldered and defeated in the glass doorway of the Waystar conference room, his father calling security to escort him out. Nervous and twitchy, unreliable but wanting so bad to believe he could do it, he could be the one to pull the trigger at his sister’s wedding. In Greece, hollowed-out, nothing left in him but lines to recite and terms to accept. They’re all there and at the same time, he’s none of them. Not now. He steps off-screen. Stewy can feel his mouth twitch, can feel something stir in him he thinks is a vague cousin to pride. He’s already begun to plan out his next steps. He already knows he’ll have Kendall on the line, that he’ll cajole Jess to let him through, jump the line of vultures come to the feast.

He knows him. He’s good for it now. 


End file.
